


That Tired Old Metaphor, Alchemy

by anactoria



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Bloodplay, Consensual Kink, Dom!John, Dom/sub, Jealousy, M/M, Rape Role-play, Spanking, sub!Sherlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-02
Updated: 2012-09-02
Packaged: 2017-11-13 09:33:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/502047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anactoria/pseuds/anactoria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>I want this, all of it. I want to dissect you and know all of you;  I want to caress the dark and ugly parts just like the red muscle of your heart; I’ll hold them in my hands and wonder at them, because they are so much rarer than mundane goodness. So much more interesting, and that’s why you can’t let anyone else have them, only me.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	That Tired Old Metaphor, Alchemy

**Author's Note:**

> Fill for a kinkmeme [prompt](http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/19351.html?thread=116397975#t116397975) that asked for non-con and abuse roleplay in the context of a consensual BDSM relationship.
> 
> Many thanks to pennypaperbrain for the super-efficient beta, and korearabin for the additional bloodplay advice. :)

As a comparison, alchemy is overused. 

It’s a cheap way of intimating mystery, and one at which Sherlock—chemist, logical thinker—can never resist a sneer. A protoscience, contaminated by religious irrationalities. Unsubstantiated claims (base metals into gold; an old world into a new; the possibility of attaining to perfection) stretching out towards the infinite and ending in the impossible. 

What people mean, when they say _alchemy_ , is, _I don’t understand_. And Sherlock understands.

There was a time—there are still times; plenty of them—when he would have scorned to waste a moment on the consideration of metaphor. Once allow the irrational in, and it will overrun the place: burgeon like a keloid; take root like Japanese knotweed in what was once clear ground for scientific thought. (Oh. There’s the proof.)

But to express this—to understand it—precisely, in this moment, now, is very important.

This moment, now:

He kneels, hands clasped, but not bound, behind his back. (He knows the consequences of moving too well to need cuffs.) Head bowed. Naked, of course. He can see the bruise that is forming on his stomach, from being slammed up against the door hard enough that the handle dug in and made him hiss. It’ll be dark tomorrow, tender to the touch. 

The fibres of the rug bite into the skin of his knees. They hurt. All of him hurts; he’s a collection of aches strung together with bone and wrapped in flesh and dumped on the living-room floor and _left_. He has been here—ten minutes? thirty? an hour? Not long enough, anyway, to have floated past caring about time, or to have reached the moment where an ache becomes a shine; a remaking-point. 

He knows he’s being punished—that this is about what he needs, not what he wants—but how much longer is John going to make him wait? The thrum of resentment is beginning to make itself known, to threaten to break out of him. Honestly, he has better things to do with his time—

And then he hears a sound. Just a shift in weight and a low, considering hum in the back of John’s throat, but it’s enough to still him, to quiet all those protests, because it is _him_ John is considering. Anticipation (not fear, not yet, but the promise of it) prickles over his bare skin, and the air in the room feels ionized with it. But storms aren’t interesting. (The weather’s never interesting—available for observation by any idiot, and too easily explained—and he pays it attention only when it’s managed to inconvenience him by obliterating some useful piece of evidence.) What’s coming is a far less ordinary terror.

Footsteps. John’s footsteps, sure and solid, behind him and circling, and remembering that he’s being watched, Sherlock begins to feel his nakedness again. John sees him like this, exposed and raw with waiting, and it’s irrevocable. He will never be able to delete his vulnerability from John’s mind. 

Firm grasp on his chin, next. Forcing him—not giving him permission—to look up. John’s expression is mild, betraying little. His eyes, though, are locked on Sherlock’s. And eyes are not the windows to the soul, but trapped and longing, Sherlock feels himself slide toward the irrational; wants to see John’s everything in that intensity of promise.

Human beings run and hide, or not, and the storm rages regardless. _This_ is for Sherlock; focused entirely on him. There’s no hiding.

John’s thumb brushes across his lips, just the once, before pressing into his mouth. The brief contact sends a surge of heat down Sherlock’s body, nipples tightening, thighs trembling.

“John,” he tries to say, and there’s a slide of fingers (warm; rough; tasting faintly of soap) against his tongue, so that what comes out is an inarticulate moan. 

And all John says—quite matter-of-factly, without breaking eye contact—is, “No.” Sherlock quiets immediately.

John withdraws his fingers, gives a small nod of satisfaction. “That’s better.”

Sherlock’s eyelids flutter closed, and something begins to crystallise inside him, clear and bright.

To transmute the world into something other than itself—there is no incantation, no passed-down shard of ancient wisdom, capable of achieving that. When alchemists wrote about changing the world, all they really meant was changing the angle from which they viewed it.

A real science, instead: geology. (Surprisingly useful. Read it right, and the stone of an anonymous wall or cliff-face will betray its location as clearly as a map reference.) Rocks metamorphose deep beneath the surface of the earth, under immense heat and pressure. _This_ is how Sherlock’s world changes. (How he learns to see it from below, from his knees.) Heat and pressure. Pain. Metamorphosis.

Without warning, John’s fingers curl in his hair, and John uses it to yank his head back, making him gasp and blink against an answering sting in his eyes.

“Up,” John says, and tugs again. 

Hands still clasped behind his back, Sherlock stumbles to his feet. His scalp sings with pain, but John’s hands are an anchor as well as a torment, and he’s unsure whether to lean back into them or to pull away.

(He is never unsure.) 

(He is becoming unlike himself. His pulse quickens.)

Something bright and metallic, then, seen from the corner of his eye. Malign gleam, suggestive like bared teeth. A knife. In John’s hand. How did he miss—

But then that’s not important, because the flat of the blade is pressed against his cheek and John’s voice is in his ear, edging lower and darker as he orders, “Bedroom. Now.”

Sherlock falters briefly in the doorway, breath catching in his throat, the first hint of real apprehension curling low in his gut. (Cock twitching.) John has stripped the bedcovers and laid out towels, instead. On the bedside table: rubbing alcohol, antiseptic wipes, latex gloves. Surgical scalpel. Sherlock trembles at the curl of John’s free hand around his bicep.

He is going to bleed.

He keeps his eyes down, his face forward; resists the impulse to turn and press his nose into John’s hair and murmur, _thank you_. John might not like that, might change his mind and find some other, less perfect way to punish him. And that would be unbearable.

No doubt there are simpler ways of changing the world, for people ( _idiots_ ) who experience it in simpler ways. 

Not for him. Not for them.

 

_He had to push for it, the first time. Had been pushing for it since they met, perhaps, without quite knowing it._

_(And wasn’t that a disquieting thought? His mind was a tool for solving mysteries; it was not supposed to contain them.)_

_It was the riding-crop that did it. The flicker of recognition elicited by mention of it; the immediacy with which that flicker had been repressed. Quick enough that he hadn’t even been certain recognition was what it was, at the time. John was easy to read, once you knew him, but his face betrayed emotion only through the most minute of twitches. To the untrained eye, it might have been nothing at all. John all over, that; a man who declined to trouble the world with his inner workings, even though trouble was exactly what he longed for._

_(And, **I could trouble you** , Sherlock thought. **I could trouble you in ways you’ve never dared know you wanted**.)_

_The kind of predilection that (Sherlock suspected) they shared wasn’t something a man like John—his hot core buried beneath a mantle of conventionality, one never shed without an excuse acceptable to his sense of duty—advertised. He kept it hidden—even from his girlfriends, no doubt afraid to startle or to appear demanding, and that was surely among the reasons his relationships invariably failed. (Though by no means the foremost. Sherlock was not going to award that honour elsewhere.) For all their dullness, the women had to suspect that there was **something**._

_So, it took a while. It wasn’t until the first one-night-stand (unusual, for John; she’d initiated things, then—recently single after a stifling relationship, and letting her hair down) spotted leaving with rope-marks on her wrists and the faint remnants of post-coital bliss in her expression that he was certain. John had, however briefly, seen something mirrored in him—the possibility of some connection darker and richer and **more** than what they currently attempted to keep squeezed into a box marked ‘friendship’—and had dismissed it. Had dismissed **him** as normal._

_The novelty of that was enough to still him for a moment. He stood staring at the closed door, eyes narrowed, contemplative; was still staring when John’s footsteps re-ascended the stairs and John reappeared in front of him, suggesting that if Sherlock wasn’t going to put the kettle on himself, then maybe he could get out of the way and let John do it._

_He sidestepped obediently, saying, “Coffee for me.”_

_John grumbled some variation on, “What did your last slave die of?” but he searched out the Nescafe and rinsed two mugs in the sink while Sherlock looked at his back and wondered to quite what degree he was wrong._

_It wasn’t some shining moment of revelation. There were no sudden declarations; no shifts in the bedrock of their friendship; no sudden surges of need overwhelming sense and thought. Only increments of curiosity and resentment. (Why would John seek synchronicity of desires with a near-stranger; fail to see its potential in him?) (How **dare** he?)_

_That, and Sherlock began to notice things differently._

_Example: John’s readiness with a warning or correction when he failed to observe some apparently essential social nicety, or to pretend the correct amount of compassion for an over-emotional witness. Previously, those moments had served a dual purpose: useful reminders of the everyday, filed away to ensure the success of future personas; confirmations of his flatmate’s superior skill at being (playing) human, at least in all the ways valued by the everyday world. Now, he found himself searching John’s expression for clues, for hints of something more (more wonderfully inappropriate) than concern or fond exasperation. For reciprocation._

_Tiny instances flared hot and bright beneath his skin, illuminating pieces of information not quite consciously sought-for. (And since when did he do anything unconsciously?) Intimate. (Dangerous.) They took root within him; sucked up long-hoarded reserves of indifference and self-sufficiency; dug their tendrils into the core of him and curled them around buried things._

_Curiosity and resentment. And, yes, their wretched shadow, desire._

_And he **minded**. Of course he minded. But perhaps in the end it just came down to this: the weakness that would undo him was also his greatest strength. He had to know._

_There were temptations. Sherlock could do something drastic—something stupid but informative—and find out what he wanted to know quickly enough. Push John up against the front door and kiss him, and number the seconds it took for their positions to be reversed. Order nipple clamps on John’s laptop and leave them lying around the flat. Dial certain phone numbers and come home marked and barely-satisfied, and take to wandering about shirtless. His questions would surely have been answered before long._

_(His questions. Simple enough, really. John had killed for him. John had offered to die for him. What else might he be willing to give? How far inside himself might he be willing to reach?)_

_He did none of those things, and he tried not to think too hard about why. (Inevitably futile. Also irrelevant.) He sought, instead, for the weak points in John’s shell of normality, and pressed upon them._

_Pointing out said shell of normality was frequently effective. Jabs at his intelligence less so. Other things that worked: noting the flaws that would inevitably end John’s (short-lived, dutiful) relationships; implying doubt as to his ability to hold Sherlock’s attention; leaving him to carry the can for Sherlock’s own misdemeanours (as John insisted on perceiving his refusals to waste time), and disappearing before he was able to protest. Running into danger roused John’s protective instinct—the thing around which he built his self-concept; the thing he used Sherlock to shore up—and sometimes his ire, but it was always undercut by relief at Sherlock’s not having managed to get killed._

_Approach that sensitive point from another angle, though, and results might be forthcoming. Prod at it. Call it into question. Possessiveness was so often the flipside of protectiveness. Make it rear up defensively, and perhaps John would be moved to reach out and take (give) what was his._

_Risky strategy. Sherlock’s favourite kind._

_An opportunity presented itself soon enough. A text from Lestrade while John was out for the afternoon. Lunch with Harry. (Liquid on her part.) Sherlock contemplated asking him along—the perpetrator might well be armed; John might be called upon to do more than conduct light—then slipped his phone back into his pocket._

_Which was how, a couple of hours later, Sherlock ended up alone in a deserted factory building with a gun pointed at his face._

_The gunman was paranoid, believing himself under attack from every quarter, and initially convinced that Sherlock was an emissary from his criminal employers, sent to dispatch him for having killed the wrong man. The insane convolutions of his logic eventually yielded several valuable pieces of data, but it was only his tendency to ramble that bought enough time for Lestrade’s lot to appear. At least Donovan was professional enough to wait until the gunman had been apprehended to start crowing._

_He might’ve been irritated, if he hadn’t had more important things to think about. As it was, he dropped a couple of barbs about Anderson’s having taken annual leave at short notice (Paris with the wife; she’d begun to suspect something, then) and pushed past her to hail a cab._

_When he got home, John was in his armchair. Deepened frown lines. Unmistakable eau de pub, but no visible signs of intoxication. Even if Sherlock hadn’t know where he was, that he’d spent the afternoon with Harry would have been obvious. John was tired, his tolerance already severely tested by the pleasantry-recrimination-apology cycle in its **n** th iteration._

_Holding the paper, not reading it. Phone out on the arm of his chair, not in his pocket. Already apprised of the day’s events, then; Lestrade, no doubt._

_He glanced up as Sherlock closed the door behind him. “Solved it, then?” he said, mildly._

_He had begun to tread carefully around Sherlock, lately. Not a welcome development, but one that would—Sherlock hoped—prove the prelude to something more satisfying. If only John would stop dancing around it._

_“Yes,” he replied. “Despite the Met’s help.”_

_“You could’ve asked me, you know,” John said. Tone still light; he was being careful to keep any hint of reproach out of it. “I would’ve appreciated the interruption, to be honest.”_

_“I know.”_

_John’s eyes narrowed. “Oh.”_

_“It was dangerous.”_

_“Yeah. Greg texted me.” Edge in his voice, now. Good. That meant Sherlock was getting somewhere._

_“You would have been a liability.”_

_“A lia—Jesus, Sherlock, I could’ve helped you. You almost got **shot** —”_

_“And yet here I am. I know you like to feel necessary, John, and I’m afraid I’ve made the mistake of encouraging that. But, really, you’re not.”_

_**Oh, but I am** , he imagined hearing. **I’m very necessary. I’ll show you.**_

_Instead, John set his paper down and got up. Stiffness in his shoulders, in the set of his mouth. He was silent for a moment._

_“Good night, Sherlock,” he said, at last, and headed up the stairs to his room._

_It took him a while. Sherlock tried not to listen._

_John didn’t speak to him the next day. Or for most of the day after that._

_If John wasn’t speaking to him, there was a reason for it. John was better at silence than most people, but eventually—like all of them—he felt the need to fill it, the absence of the human voice discomfiting him. He was mulling something over, then. Coming to a decision._

_Evening was falling when he finally broke his silence. Sherlock was standing at the window. He didn’t turn when he heard John enter the room; didn’t greet him, or attempt to hurry whatever it was that was percolating inside John. He waited, letting himself ride high on the tension. John would have to come to the (hopefully) inevitable conclusion by himself. To think it his own idea._

_“Alright,” said John’s voice, an edge to it that Sherlock couldn’t immediately identify—exhaustion? desire? fear?—and he pivoted where he stood, but remained silent._

_His heart was beating rather more quickly than anticipated. New data; unprecedented. (Problem?)_

_“Look,” John went on. “I don’t know what this is about, the way you’ve been—acting, lately. But—” He glanced down, and there was sadness, not anger, in the twist of his mouth, and oh, no, no, this wasn’t how it was supposed to happen at all. “—if you want rid of me, then—well. Give me a couple of days and I’ll be out of your hair. I’ve called Harry. I can stay with her for a bit, if I need to.”_

_Sherlock blinked. Opened his mouth around an answer and there was nothing, because no. Stupid, stupid, stupid—how could he have miscalculated so egregiously?—and now—_

_Now—John was looking at him again._

_Worry in the lines of his face; a hesitant flicker that could have been (oh please let it be) hope. “Sherlock?”_

_“John—I. No.” He focused his eyes upon John’s face; hardened his voice against panic. “You’ve jumped to completely the wrong conclusion. As usual.”_

_“Then what? I thought I was your friend, Sherlock. What the hell is it you want from me?” John sounded so helpless, and that was wrong, too. That wasn’t what he wanted at all._

_He was crossing the room, then._

_Words had failed him, somehow, left him weaponless, and so he reached for John’s hand, instead. And then the air was thick between them. John’s lips parted in surprise._

_Sherlock dropped to his knees._

_And, “ **Oh** ,” breathed John, the confusion on his face giving way in short order to wonder. And then: “Why didn’t you just **tell** me?” He blinked down at Sherlock. (John looking down on him. That was new, and it made a tremor run through him.) “What, did you think I’d run away from you or something?”_

_“It’s not me you’d be running from,” Sherlock replied (not saying, **I’m still not telling you** —there was still so much John didn’t know, but he **would** know, and that was a terror and a thrill.) What should have been snide, knowing, came out heavy with hope, and John’s hand moved to rest in his hair._

_“This is nuts,” John said. “We’re not even—we haven’t even **talked** about it. Any of it. Jesus.”_

_“Yes,” Sherlock says, and what’s in it is this:_

_**Yes, I understand**. And, **yes, I want this, all of it. I want to dissect you and know all of you; I want to caress the dark and ugly parts just like the red muscle of your heart; I’ll hold them in my hands and wonder at them, because they are so much rarer than mundane goodness. So much more interesting, and that’s why you can’t let anyone else have them, only me.**_

_John looked at him as if he didn’t quite understand. But there was amazement on his face and desire in the curl of his fingers, and suddenly it didn’t seem quite so wretched._

 

The blade is at his throat again, cool steel over carotid heat, and he moves toward the bed.

John could end him, like this, if he so chose. John would know just where to cut, the precise amount of pressure to use, and Sherlock would bleed out before he even heard the ambulance coming. (And though self-destruction is something he no longer practices, Sherlock sometimes thinks that he might let it happen.) He takes the thought out and plays with it, sometimes. Because John is John, he can hold it in his mind and look at it and find it beautiful.

As they reach the bed, John’s free hand stills at his waist—momentarily gentle, guiding, not forcing—and the blade disappears as he settles obediently onto his knees on the mattress. Then John presses up behind him, denim against bare skin, heat of a clothed erection pressed against the cleft of his buttocks, and grips his hip, hard. A reminder (as if he needs it) that the point of this is not tenderness, but obedience and pain.

“You know what’s going to happen now,” John says into his ear.

Sherlock opens his mouth to answer, then stops. It didn’t sound like a question. Perhaps he isn’t supposed to speak? (Being unable to predict John like that—this is the start of it, the burning-away of the everyday, the compression of his self.)

“Well?” John demands, and he manages a ragged “Yes” before the flat of the blade is caressing the back of his neck, skating over his shoulder. The cold of it makes his breath catch in his throat. John draws it across his chest in smooth strokes, one direction and then the other, working his way lower and lower. John’s grip, the angle at which he holds the knife, are careful—he won’t break skin, not yet—but the proximity of the cutting edge forces Sherlock to be still. John is right _there_ , hard and unyielding against him, rendered formidable by will and concentration, and Sherlock can’t even squirm against him; has to hold himself steady on trembling thighs as John presses the blade (warming slowly now with the heat of Sherlock’s skin, his own fear and arousal) over each nipple, slides it down the flat plane of his belly, wreathes his body with invisible glyphs of ownership.

“You know _why_ I’m going to do this.” John’s voice drops, rough-edged, and Sherlock nods wordlessly, closing his eyes as he suppresses a shiver.

(He knows what the pretext will be, this time. A witness, this afternoon, gazing at him doe-eyed. Allowing her to flirt shamelessly with him seemed the most expedient route to gaining information. Little came of it, but when he glanced around he saw the minute alteration in John’s expression, the intimation of flint and hunger there, and he knew, with a brief and dizzying flash of arousal, what was coming. He almost went back to ask her for another cigarette.)

The touch of the knife at the base of his penis makes his eyes snap open. Unexpected; unbalancing. John slides the flat of it—smooth and alien—up the underside of his shaft, slow, reaching for a nipple with his other hand and pinching hard. Sherlock hears himself make a small noise, head thrown back, swallowing hard, John chuckling darkly against his neck.

And then the blade is gone and so is John, and another, protesting sound rises in his throat as he is left unmoored and helpless at the centre of his swirling thoughts.

His wrists and ankles are free, and John is going to hurt him. But escape isn’t an option, isn’t even a thought until ( _it’s okay_ ) it’s too late anyway and John is back, pressing him down into the mattress to lie on his front.

He sets something down on the bed, in easy reach. Sherlock catches a glimpse of it from the corner of his eye and realises he has missed the moment when knife was swapped for scalpel, his awareness momentarily blindsided by loss and want. Now, though—he knows what’s next, and his cock throbs needfully, trapped between his belly and the bed. The urge to move, rut against it, allow himself just a moment’s relief, is very nearly overwhelming, but he manages to stay still. Obedient. (John’s.)

“Hands above your head,” John tells him, “hold on to the bars,” and he complies, stretching out, offering himself. John straddles him (rough brush of denim against the bare backs of his thighs), leans over him and in close. John’s breath is warm on his shoulder blades, and for a second his skin tingles, half-expecting the kiss that John might bestow there at some other time, in some other mood.

What he feels instead is something more intimate—the cool brush of cotton wool soaked in alcohol; the promise of pain—and he trembles beneath the sureness of John’s hands.

 

_“I need to know what I **can’t** do,” John said, and Sherlock bit back a groan. This conversation had been inevitable since this—they—became a possibility, but that didn’t mean the prospect of it was welcome._

_He had succeeded admirably, in the end, at getting John to admit his interest; he might yet succeed admirably at getting John to give him something close to what he needed. Still, there was that layer of conventionality, that need to adhere to form—to **do it right.**_

_He rolled his eyes, then turned them straight on John. “Nothing,” he said._

_John, with utter predictability, half-turned away from him. “Sherlock, if you’re just messing about—”_

_“Do I ever?”_

_“So, what? You don’t have any dealbreakers?” Pause. “Hard limits?” John’s gaze remained steady, but he coloured just a little on that last phrase. Unfamiliar with the terminology. (Not surprising. Sherlock can’t imagine him going to clubs, being part of a scene. So many people, so few of them interesting.) He’d been reading up, then. For Sherlock’s sake—and that was more endearing than it should have been._

_Endearing, but nowhere near enough, and Sherlock didn’t have to try to sound put out. “Of course,” he snapped, “can’t have you worrying that you’ll hurt me. That you’ll push me too far—”_

_John was watching him, and Sherlock waited for the inevitable lecture. But it didn’t materialise. In its place, a low chuckle._

_And John was moving towards him, then, leaning into his space and murmuring in his ear: “Oh, I’m going to push you. I’m going to **hurt** you. I just want to know how creative I need to be.”_

_The jolt of arousal that that sent to Sherlock’s groin briefly short-circuited his mental process, and for a second he was left open-mouthed and blinking._

_It took him a second to gather his faculties. “Fine,” he managed. “No bodily waste. No dress-up, it’s thoroughly ridiculous. Nothing that’s likely to impede my ability to do my job.” John nodded, eyes intent (eager), and so Sherlock went on: “Now, let me tell you what you **can** do. You can mark me. You can restrain me—but if you can control me **without** doing so…”_

_He trailed off, and watched John’s eyes darken; watched him lick his lips. Then nod.“Safeword,” John said._

_“Don’t need one.”_

_“And that’s exactly why I **do**.”_

_He sighed, but he didn’t argue. “Diogenes. Mood-killing associations aplenty.”_

_John’s mouth twitched, briefly, the corners of his eyes crinkling. Then:_

_“On the bed. Hands on the headboard. I’ll tell you when you can move.”_

_Obedience outran thought, and he was shedding his clothes._

_John might be what he needed, yet. This could work._

_It **would**._

_He didn’t want to think about what might happen if it didn’t._

 

“I think,” John murmurs, “you need a reminder. Of who you belong to.”

 _As if I could forget_ , Sherlock wants to say (scornfully or prayerfully, he doesn’t even know) but what comes out is an inchoate mess of “I don’t—” and “I can’t—” and “ _John_ ” and “ _please_.”

“Quiet,” John says, and Sherlock is quiet. He takes a breath; is, for a moment, in the tingle of waiting skin, the never-familiar (always-missed) finality of having given himself over. The still point. And then there is the scalpel; the first cut. A dull pressure, at first; but the faint wetness at the edges of the cut, the first hesitant welling-up of pain, quickly supplant the dullness. 

He is bleeding. John is making him bleed—allowing him to exist for a moment in his sundered edges, in the knowledge that he is John’s to take apart.

John wipes away the blood. Makes a second short incision, below the first and parallel to it, and Sherlock is gasping. The pain stretches him wire-taut, compresses the whole of him into the space of a single sensation—it doesn’t reduce him; simply squeezes out unnecessaries—it is at the centre of him, supplanting chaos—if he were to look at himself through an infra-red camera, the viewfinder would crack with the intensity of it—

Heat and pressure. Metamorphosis.

The initial flare of it recedes as John continues, working in clean, precise strokes, moving from one shoulder blade to the other, marking him symmetrically with unfaltering hands. It becomes a stable thing, a life-raft upon the swell of his awareness. He stretches out on it, within it, enveloped and cold-warm and safe. (The only security he will ever ask for.)

It occurs to him that John has probably chosen the location of the cuts with one eye to the ironic. The shoulder blades are one of the safer places on the human body to cut, the skin there not subject to undue stretching. They’re also the place from which the wings of an angel might sprout.

Obvious, points out his rational mind, somewhere far above him. Rather silly. But here, now, he slips through drifts of speculation on what might crawl forth from beneath _his_ skin. What might unloose itself inside his mind and climb to the surface, make itself known despite carefully laid-down strata of control, deflection, dismissal. What John might uncover in him. What he might be helpless to stop.

And helplessness is the _point_ , he knows it is—but reaching the point isn’t easy, it’s not _meant_ to be—and a second’s panic catches in his throat and—

Oh. Oh, no wonder. John is no longer cutting him. And he needs John’s touch, needs the warm-dark space they carve out between them here—their torture-sanctuary—and John’s hands have gone—and without them he will crack apart—

Then, one of them comes down hard on his left buttock. It’s a solid, stinging pain, the crack of it loud above his panting breath, and with it he’s back in the room. Skin afire, still-neglected cock painfully hard beneath him, dizzy with adrenaline and need. Helpless.

(Okay.)

 

_Molly was staring at him._

_Well, she did a lot of that, usually in combination with blushing, stammering, or forgetting what she was saying mid-sentence. She’d managed to rein it in somewhat since figuring out his relationship with John, but that didn’t mean she’d broken the habit completely. And right now, it wasn’t helping._

_Sherlock removed one of his latex gloves. “Yes?” he said, giving Molly a sharp look. Drawing attention to her behaviour was usually enough to get her to stop it._

_She blinked. “Um,” she said, eloquently._

_“You’re gawping,” he informed her. “Is something wrong? And that doesn’t mean I want to hear about the disastrous date you went on last night. Is something going to interfere with the experiment?”_

_“Oh. No! No, nothing like that.”_

_He nodded, pulled off the other glove, and strode to the bin to discard them. “Good. Look at the abrasions again in an hour; I’ll need you to send me the photographs.”_

_“Sherlock?” Molly’s voice was quiet, hesitant—as it frequently was—but for once she didn’t back down when he met her eyes. Motivated by something other than her schoolgirlish infatuation, today, then; something that she considered more important._

_“What?”_

_“Is—is everything okay?” She bit her lip. “At home, I mean.”_

_He frowned, and began rolling down his shirtsleeves; first one, then the other. Her gaze followed his hands._

_**Oh**. _

_That was what she’d been staring at. The marks on his wrists. Restraints did little for him, most of the time, but last night John had looked at him with a hunger in his eyes and said, “You’d look beautiful, struggling,” and it had been almost as good as if he’d refused to take no for an answer._

_In the end, Sherlock had been rather taken with the bruises. A covert reminder of what awaited him behind closed doors, beside the everyday frustrations and tender remonstrations._

_Though not quite so covert as he’d thought. Distracted, he’d let his guard drop. Not that it mattered, really—unlike John, he didn’t care a whit who thought what about their nocturnal activities—but naïve, worrying Molly had jumped to the wrong conclusion entirely. (Unsurprising, really; her meekness, her readiness to obey orders, made him suspect at least one bullying authority figure in her childhood.) It wouldn’t do to let the notion take hold._

_He watched her until her gaze dropped._

_“Honestly, Molly. I know you’ve little in the way of a private life of your own, but if you’ve been reduced to fevered speculation about what John and I do behind closed doors, the situation’s worse than I thought.”_

_She looked back up at him—and then her eyes widened, and she coloured visibly._

_“You should try speed-dating,” he went on. “Not enough time for you to bore people.” He finished fastening the buttons at his cuffs, and reached for his jacket. “Don’t forget. Photographs!”_

_John was waiting outside, watching them through the glass. It was unlikely that he’d heard anything. Sherlock saw him catch sight of Molly’s crumpled expression, though, and he didn’t move to reassure her, or to apologise for whatever he might imagine Sherlock to have said. He knew, then._

_All he said, though, was, “Right, where now?”_

_John didn’t come out with it on the way to New Scotland Yard, or after Sherlock had received Molly’s results and pinned down the perpetrator. He was quiet as they left, glancing at Sherlock and biting his lip, and Sherlock wondered whether he might be about to admit what was troubling him._

_But he just asked, “Dinner?”_

_Silence was good, usually. But it also meant that John might be coming to conclusions about their relationship without his input; letting Molly’s silly little assumption put down roots in his mind. And that was not on._

_“Not hungry,” Sherlock replied._

_“You haven’t eaten since yesterday.”_

_He let his eyes flicker sideways. “There’s something else I need more.”_

_“Did you sleep last night?” John was looking doubtful._

_This little show of concern: clearly driven by consternation at the possibility of being seen as abusive. By the discomfort with his own desires that might touch within him._

_The only thing that kept Sherlock’s annoyance from showing on his face was the certainty that he’d never get what he wanted if he let it._

_“Yes,” he lied. “On the sofa. I couldn’t be bothered going to bed.”_

_John looked at him again (over-explaining: a beginner’s mistake; possibly transparent) but then nodded, apparently satisfied._

_That discomfort would last, though, if John was allowed to dwell on it. It would have to be got rid of._

_Sherlock had devoted no little thought to what John gained from this (the better to ensure he got no stupid ideas about stopping), and the conclusion was predictably simple._

_It wasn’t about control—except when it was, and John feared that. He wasted time worrying about how quickly it could turn pathological, were he to let it become an outlet for the frustrations and helplessnesses of everyday life. Really, though, it was little different from anything else they did together. John wanted to take his darkness and own it so that it couldn’t own him. To fashion it into something strong; something kind._

_And if he sometimes mistook caution for kindness—well, it was easily, and frequently, done. He couldn’t really be blamed, but he could be taught. Sherlock would find a way around it._

_Later. He knelt on their bed, stretched somewhere between the edges of bliss and exhaustion. No restraints, but the spiked wolf collar fastened around his neck forced him to look up. To meet John’s eyes. To watch as he reached into the back of the wardrobe; to wonder what he might come out with tonight. Sherlock could frequently predict it, but tonight he forced himself not to try, searching uncertainty for the edge of thrill._

_The bright intensity he usually felt when John was about to hurt him—the alertness born of anticipation—was absent. Darkness tugged at the blunted corners of him, and it felt unusually peaceful. Not what he looked for in this. But—he was safe, here, with John (though he might prefer not to be)—safe to go somewhere warm and quiet and unfamiliar—_

_Sherlock’s knee slipped and he wobbled, almost pitching sideways off the edge of the bed. He caught himself just in time, but John was already turning, eyes wide. A different (wrong) kind of intensity on his face, now. Worry._

_Damn. That did it._

_“You’re half-asleep,” he said. Accusation wasn’t quite audible in his voice, but Sherlock could practically see him vibrating with the effort of keeping it inside._

_“We’ve had a long day.”_

_“You didn’t sleep at all last night, did you?”_

_Well, the evening was pretty comprehensively ruined by now. No point continuing the lie, at this point._

_(That was all. He **could** have done; he would tell himself so repeatedly, later.)_

_John shook his head, and then sank down beside Sherlock on the bed. He looked at his hands for a moment, then reached up to unbuckle the collar._

_“John.”_

_“Diogenes.”_

_Sherlock blinked._

_Fix. Needed. Now._

_He slipped from the bed, eel-quick; moved to kneel beside John, to rest his cheek on John’s thigh. He wasn’t versed in offering comfort—he had rarely had reason to do so—but he would, in whatever way he could, if it was necessary, since the alternative (the slow erosion of John’s willingness to give him what he needed) was untenable. A show of intimacy like this ought to mollify him._

_But John caught his wrist before his knees met the floor; tugged him back up onto the mattress._

_(Bad sign.)_

_John’s head dropped forward into his hands and stayed there for a moment. He looked back up, and everything was visible in his face, if you knew how to read it. Frustration and resignation, but mostly tiredness._

_“You’re angry,” Sherlock said._

_“Yes. That’s why I can’t do this now.” But John leaned in close instead of pulling away, and Sherlock watched him with curiosity._

_John pressed a kiss to his cheek. He turned his head to meet John’s lips with his own, but already John was pulling away from him, toeing off his shoes and socks and shuffling backwards up the bed. Sherlock still watched him, struggling to parse his actions. Not acquiescence, but not quite rejection, either. What?_

_John sighed. He picked the collar off the bed, and set it down on the nightstand. Then he turned out the lamp._

_“Just come to bed,” he said. “God knows you need some kip, and I could do with a few hours myself.”_

_Sherlock opened his mouth. Then he closed it again. He obeyed, climbing under the blankets and curling towards John’s warmth, not quite touching._

 

_He woke later with John’s fingers in his hair, stroking sleepily._

_A subconscious attempt to offer through gentleness what he wouldn’t allow himself to give in pain? To refuse it would only exacerbate the problem, though it was hardly an effective substitute._

_And yet._

_Sherlock closed his eyes._

 

The press of gauze, the sting of antiseptic, are expected, but they still make him wince. Another variety of pain, this one clean and cool. He keeps still beneath it, but not without effort; his muscles ache from holding onto the bars, and he’s trembling minutely.

“Up,” John says, with another, gentler swat to his buttock, once he’s finished cleaning the cuts and the antiseptic burn has settled into something more bearable.

Sherlock swallows, a shiver of returning anticipation making its way up his spine, as he obeys. 

When John is gentle, like this, it means he’s thinking. It means this is far from over. And Sherlock doesn’t know what will happen next.

He is—not less than, but separate from, the self he inhabits outside of these moments. He still sees the nets of possibility stretching out endlessly around him, but right now he is a fixed point at their centre, not a searcher through them. Caught. And passive, because he is not his own creature. His purpose, now, comes down to this: suffer. Take it; all of it. _Feel_ everything that John gives him. 

(Feel. Not an advantage; but an utter necessity nonetheless.)

A moment’s pause. John leaves him, setting scalpel and antiseptic back on the bedside table, and then the mattress dips as he comes back up behind Sherlock. Close, this time, and there’s the clink of a belt being unbuckled. Sherlock’s breath catches in his throat. Then John is right up against him, cock pressed to the cleft of his buttocks, hard and heavy, and Sherlock can feel the heat of his arousal, hear the rapidity of his breath. If he were to turn his head he’d see the flutter of half-closed eyelids, John’s lips parted at the sight of him like this, wrecked and helpless and bleeding—and a tremor of need runs through him and he squirms and spreads his legs fractionally wider, rubs himself back against John’s erection as a tiny, incoherent sound escapes his throat.

John brushes the back of his neck with bared teeth and reaches between his legs, and the desire that pools in him is an ache; is like needing to scream. For a second, John’s touch is gentle, the brush of his fingers light as breath—and then John wraps a hand around his shaft and squeezes, hard. Too hard, hard enough to hurt, and he’s torn between wanting to buck up into John’s hand and to pull away, whimpering. By the time John releases him he’s gasping for breath, rough and desperate, a sound that doesn’t quite seem to belong to him.

“Can’t have you getting ahead of yourself,” John reminds him, and he sounds so calm, so conversational, even though Sherlock can feel the anticipatory twitching of cock against the cleft of his buttocks. How can he do that? Only then John’s voice lowers, turns ragged—a darkness of desire in it now—and he says, “You don’t get to come until I’m inside you.”

He groans; arches back helplessly. John might as well just kill him now.

But John’s fingers find their way to his mouth again, and push inside. He sucks diligently, anchoring himself around them and imagining for a moment that they are John’s cock, instead—that he can make John’s eyes glaze over with pleasure, see him lose control and know the power of his own submission. Instead, John’s knee nudges his thighs wider apart and John’s fingers slip free from his mouth and begin to press inside him, making him gasp and clamp down around them, eyes squeezing involuntarily closed.

Mercifully, John gives him a moment to breathe and to collect himself, to let the slow burn of being entered—briefly eclipsing the pain in his shoulder blades—subside. He relaxes as best he can, lets his body accept the intrusion, and John twists his fingers and pushes in hard. He does it again—and again, crooking them just so, make him inhale sharply at the sudden spike of pleasure. 

It’s not gentle, but it is pleasure without pain—and suddenly it’s not enough. Sherlock can feel the edges of his consciousness receding, his mind opening itself to the world. 

He begins to be aware of a pattern in John’s movements. To know when he will curl his fingers, when he’ll twist his wrist. The noise of the street outside their window starts to make its way in ( _Ford Fiesta Routemaster Transit van feuding couple drug deal mother with pushchair_ ) and _no_. That’s not what he needs, not what either of them needs, and he is turning his head to tell John so—to beg him, if need be—when a sharp smack to his exposed arse steals his breath and steals _him_ , back from useless awareness, back to this bright centre of pain and light.

There’s a huff of amusement somewhere behind him. 

John planned that, he realises. Cruel, cruel John. Clever John. Wonderful John.

The blows fall swift and sure, after that. Swathes of pain radiate from the centre of him (because wherever John’s hands touch, that is his centre), buttocks and shoulders afire with it, cock straining desperately with the need to just be _touched_ , and soon he is—not _lost to_ sensation, but _possessed by_ it (by John), coming apart beneath the pressure of it to be reassembled in subtly different form. 

John rearranges the molecules of him. John will not reduce him to less than he is—couldn’t, even if he tried—but will chase away the irrelevant, train all the myriad beams of his light into one intensely shining thing. And what’s irrelevant, right now, is everything and everybody outside this room. Heat and pressure and the consciousness of being owned; and all of it is freedom.

 

_“You never had anyone to talk to, did you?”_

_“I never **needed** anybody.”_

_“Easy to tell yourself that, yeah.”_

_Sherlock sneered—a reflex—but after a moment he turned his head, something in John’s voice drawing him out of the black layer of inertia that had settled over him that morning and refused to lift._

_His own mood had made John need to talk about something._

_Probably something entirely dull. Most people looked away from the visible symptoms of mental disorder, or of the lower-level, everyday madnesses; those ordinarily elided under the title of ‘feelings.’ But those who think that they recognise the germ of it in themselves— **they** are endlessly attracted, compelled to reveal their imagined share in it._

_Still. It was John. He’d only be impossible later if Sherlock refused to listen._

_“I didn’t either,” John went on, proving him right. “With Mum being ill and then Harry and—well. Dad’s never exactly been the talking type.” He stopped, and for a moment appeared as though he might be finished. Then: “It’s not even the talking, really, though, is it? It’s just—having someone who needs you for more than what they need you for.”_

_“I wasn’t like you, John. I was never responsible for anybody.”_

_“You didn’t exactly have an easy time of it, though.” It wasn’t a question. “I know what it’s like, doubting yourself. You know that. If—”_

_“No, you **don’t** know,” Sherlock snapped, and then was suddenly, unaccountably angry at himself for having answered. He let his voice harden—but he couldn’t stop. “It wasn’t myself I stopped trusting. I know what I want.”_

_John didn’t say anything more._

_It was only later that he realised what John had fumbling toward, in his clumsy fashion, had been a **thank you**._

_**Someone who needs you for more than what they need you for**. Laughably misguided. _

_Why wasn’t he laughing?_

 

Each blow makes him clench more tightly around John’s fingers, and they’re buried deep inside him, still moving slowly and teasingly and perfectly. Soon he’s letting out helpless little animal noises, the slow build of heat taking him by surprise, threatening to tip him over the edge. He remembers John’s warning, and it’s all he can to gasp, “John—please—I can’t, I’m—”

Luckily, John understands.

He slides his fingers out, and for a moment Sherlock is left bereft and wanting, the absence of his touch unacceptable even though it’s what he asked for. Unacceptable because it leaves room for panic, and panic-born rebellion, to rise inside him, because John has hurt him and John is gone, and he’s not supposed to be gone, he’s not allowed, this isn’t right it is—

—over, because John’s back, behind him again, close to him (though still not close enough, never close enough, there’s no such thing as enough.) Somewhere in the interval John has divested himself of his clothes, and naked he is absorbingly present. Warm and achingly hard (and flesh and blood and bone, so much more satisfying to break oneself against than the grey indifference of city streets or the evanescent transport of drugs), pressing up against him and murmuring, “I’m going to fuck you now,” in a voice that sounds like a threat and feels like a kiss.

John enters him slowly, making Sherlock feel the stretch as the head of his cock pushes in. His hands on Sherlock’s hips are firm, keeping him from pushing back—keeping him passive and obedient as John stills inside of him. Any other time, that might be a kindness, letting him acclimatise and ride out the initial discomfort, but right now it’s torture, and Sherlock bites down on a noise of frustration.

A soft laugh somewhere above him. And then John is fucking him unrelentingly hard, one hand still gripping his hip, the other reaching beneath them to palm his cock teasingly before slipping away again. 

There is no mistaking the message: he is John’s, he is he is here to be used until he can take no more—and the cracked little sob that breaks out of him at the thought is what sends John over the edge. He presses in deep, hips flush against Sherlock’s buttocks, and jerks once, twice, before he’s coming with a groan.

Sherlock risks a tiny glance behind him, the prospect of seeing John’s face—eyes squeezed shut, mouth half-open, lost to pleasure—too much to resist. 

The look is the reassurance that he needs, though at any other time he might hate himself for needing it. In giving up control, he has taken a little of John’s; pulled John with him into the light. He is John’s, and John is his.

 

_John’s hand between his legs, kneading his balls, just this side of painful. The other tugging at the chain hanging between his nipples. Sharp spike of agony; connection between two points like hot wire; his erection throbbing in anticipation. Almost enough to send him under, to send him to the place where he might see the world melted and re-formed._

_Almost, but not quite. John let go too soon; his hands exchanged cruelty for caresses too easily; his groans of arousal turned to whispered reassurances, and Sherlock was left hovering—not floating—somewhere just short of satisfaction. He hissed in frustration._

_And that had definitely been the wrong move. John was pulling away from him immediately, hands gentle on his shoulders, eyes searching his face. “Are you okay?”_

_His mouth twisted in disappointment._

_“Come on, talk to me. You know, if it gets too much—”_

_“It’s never come **close** to being too much.” John blinked, and that startled expression, the woundedness incipient in it, was a goad. It elicited so much fear. Not that he would prove to be too much for John, precisely, but that John would prove unequal to the task of owning him. Of giving him what he needed. “It’s never come close to being **enough**.”_

_“Sherlock—” John reached out for him. The brush of his fingers soft, uncertain._

_“Stop it. Don’t coddle me.”_

_John, stilled, and for a moment, neither of them spoke._

_Sherlock watched John watch him—look him all over, carefully, and even then the scrutiny couldn’t help but make his pulse quicken a notch—and then, apparently, come to a decision. His mouth set. Something in his expression hardened._

_And then he reached out again._

_This time, his hand gripped the back of Sherlock’s neck. Hard._

_“Sorry,” he murmured, and his voice was low, but all of the uncertainty was gone from it. “How can I make it up to you?”_

_He could’ve been acting. Putting on a front to salvage the situation._

_But Sherlock knew John, and he knew that look, that new steel in his expression. It made rare appearances, usually at moments when they were both about to risk becoming gun-crime statistics. It meant that John was getting ready to face something. That he was determined to do so._

_And the web of possibility that opened out around them was dizzying._

_Sherlock opened his mouth to answer, and found his throat dry. He swallowed, and tried again._

_“John,” he said, and what he was asking twisted sharply deep within him. “I want—I need to be—”_

_He was struggling for words. He never struggled for words. Like untangling razorwire with bare hands, this. There were reasons he had never tried to explain it, vital as it was._

_John’s grip on him tightened._

_“When you hurt me. I want—that’s not all I want. I want to feel as though you mean it. I want to shut my eyes and believe that I don’t have a choice. That you won’t stop, ever. To be—”_

_**Defeated** , he meant to say._

_“—yours,” he said._

 

For a moment, the room is silent but for their panting breaths. Sherlock doesn’t move, sliced beautifully and cleanly through by pain, held tight by it in this this fixed point, this moment of defeat (silence, love). Overtaken briefly by a will that remakes him in unfamiliar shapes. No; not him. The world. Sweeps away its excesses of trivia and distils it to sensation and need, to the two of them within the walls of this room and the everything that they encompass.

John’s grip on his hips slackens. “Up you get,” he says, mildly, and at that mildness everything in Sherlock revolts.

His cock still aches, dripping and neglected between his legs, but it’s not that. (Sometimes John doesn’t let him come, and _that_ is somehow fine—it’s part of this, painlovefearneedgivetake and so much more than that, this thing they need to hold each other together.) But this can’t be over. Something at the core of him has deliquesced and he cannot staunch it, can’t hold it in and let himself be put back together yet; and no more can he live with it in the everyday, so this can’t be over yet, he can’t go back, can’t, can’t—

A hand in his hair, yanking him upright. 

They’re not done yet. ( _Thank you_.)

“So, do you remember now? Who you belong to?” John’s voice is as casual as it was earlier, except that there’s a shade of unsteadiness in it now, a tiny betrayal of what _he_ needs from this. And his hand is on Sherlock’s cock, and Sherlock doesn’t quite know what it is that spills out of him along with his orgasm, then, except that it’s _yours_ and _sorry_ and _please_ , a litany of need wrapped in the language of love.

John’s arm wraps around his waist—gently, this time for real. He sags forward and John catches him, lowers him down softly to lie on his stomach, rests fingers in his hair. He must look ruined—bleeding, trembling, hair stuck to his forehead with sweat—and the way John is regarding him (with the satisfaction of a job well done), confirms it. 

The fact that this is comforting no longer surprises him, though at times he likes to run over its oddness in his mind, handle it like a favourite curiosity. He will do so again, later—but for now Sherlock presses his face into the pillow, and, just for this moment, is peaceful. Not in the way that most people think of, when they think of peace—pastel colours and placid lakes and all that bucolic insipidity—but in the way that the flame of a candle is peaceful. Heat and light, pure and simple, incapable of being anything other than itself.

There’s the real wonder of it. For all the times that John takes him apart and rearranges the components of him and remakes his world, he never comes out of it anything less than what he is.

Metamorphosis. Heat and pressure. 

And—irrationality. Ritual. 

Love. 

Perhaps the alchemists were onto something.

Sherlock buries his face in the pillow, and groans. John makes an inquiring sound somewhere behind him, and he has to scrabble for words.

“Metaphors,” he explains, at length. “Ridiculous.” 

He hears John’s quiet snort of amusement in his ear, and closes his eyes.

 

_“We’re not doing away with safewords,” John said, apropos of nothing, “just so you know.”_

_Sherlock stopped walking, and turned to face him. He’d thought—hoped—John might come round to something like this, soon; had read it in the tension in John’s movements, the increased frequency of his glances in Sherlock’s direction._

_He rolled his eyes, but the wash of arousal and apprehension and sweet relief, the opening-up of his mind to cataclysm, must have done something to his expression, because John took a step towards him, one corner of his curling up in a smile. “We can do this my way or not at all,” he said. “Okay?”_

_Sherlock nodded._

_John’s smile widened, grew wicked, and suddenly walking didn’t seem fast enough. Sherlock stepped out into the road to hail a taxi._

 

_He shed his coat and hung it up behind the door; one last slow, deliberate action as John followed him up the stairs. He smoothed out the sleeves. Let go, and the door clicked shut behind them._

_He looked at John. John looked at him. He could hear his own pulse._

_John shoved him up against the wall, then, fisted hands in the fabric of his shirt and **ripped** , buttons scattering to the floor, the ruin of it left wrapped around his arms, immobilising him. _

_The world span around him._

_“John—” he breathed, and got a slap to the cheek for his trouble. Then a tug across the room and a hard shove, and he was face-down on the sofa with John on top of him, the insistent heat of John’s erection pressing into the back of his thigh._

_"Struggle all you want," John told him. "You're not getting out of this."_

_With a sigh of relief, he closed his eyes and tipped back his head, and gave in._

 

_“Are you sorry?” he asked, much later._

_“No.” John pressed a kiss to his temple, then turned to face him, looking at him seriously. “Sherlock—”_

_“I don’t need to hear it,” he interrupted, and John looked at him curiously._

_He held one bruised wrist up to the light, and watched John’s worried expression fade into a smile. Didn’t need to say anything more: it was all there. **All the proof I need**._

 

John has never been stupid enough to use the word ‘aftercare’, though both of them know that’s exactly what it is. He insists on inspecting Sherlock’s cuts for a second time, rubbing ointment onto his buttocks (unnecessary, really—the flat of his hand doesn’t leave marks like the thin sharp strokes of the crop—but Sherlock can’t bring himself to complain), cleaning him up with a damp flannel and making him drink a glass of water. He tosses the soiled towels into the corner of the room, for now, and fetches a fresh blanket to pull up over Sherlock’s waist. He’s on the point of settling in beside Sherlock when something arrests his movements and he sits up slightly, eyes narrowing.

Sherlock eyes him—not quite worriedly, but with the need to appraise, to read him, already reasserting itself. (The fear that John will begin to doubt this—will abandon it, abandon him—never completely conquered, because loss is an essential component of love and absence an essential component of need, and so fear must be an essential component of having that need satisfied. Logic, when applied to emotion, is terrifying.)

But all John says is, “We missed dinner. And you didn’t have lunch. I should make you some toast, or something.”

Sherlock expresses his relief with a contemptuous roll of his eyes. “Not important,” he says. “It can wait until tomorrow.”

John shakes his head. “And your idea of important is—” He makes a vague gesture, apparently intended to encompass everything they’ve just done. 

Sherlock reaches for his hand and traps it, tugging him close. “No less correct than usual.” He pulls John’s arm around his waist, burying his face in the juncture of John’s neck and shoulder.

“Back online, then.”

 _I’m always online_ , he means to protest, _even you aren’t that good_ , but all that comes out is a sleepy, “Mmm.”

John places a soft kiss on his forehead, and reaches over to turn off the lamp. All that’s left in the room is the sound of their breathing, the gentle weight of John’s arm around his waist. 

(The traffic outside, the creak of Mrs Hudson getting up to make her bedtime cuppa, the muffled noise of neighbours arguing over their inane television options—)

The world is back, the endless background hum of trivia making itself felt. Settling around him, weighting him to the everyday. But for now, at least, it is bearable. 

Sherlock sleeps.


End file.
